I served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Development at Paramount Pictures, A Viacom Company. At Paramount, I had been responsible for establishing digital strategy and helping to drive the companies most public partnerships such as the Apple Itunes, Amazon, and Walmart partnerships. Prior to joining Paramount in 2006, I led the global wireless strategy and development team for Windows Media® at Microsoft Corp., pushing entertainment convergence within the wireless space. I have been at the forefront of media and technology for more than a decade and am nationally recognized as an influential leader in the film and high-tech industries.
Before joining Microsoft, I was an entrepreneur of successful media and technology companies, including the post-production feature film industry’s first all-digital post-production sound design and editing facility, located in Burbank, Calif.
I was appointed as executive vice president for the world’s largest streaming media aggregator and later as chairman and chief executive officer of a digital media security company. I also helped pioneer the development of key technologies used by copyright owners in preventing piracy of music and films over the Internet’s peer-to-peer community.
I started my career in Los Angeles, where I spearheaded a production company called Goodbro Pictures with Hollywood star and partner Cuba Gooding Jr. I was Gooding’s personal manager and later executive producer through several critically acclaimed and successful films, including the popular “Jerry Maguire,” for which Gooding earned an Academy Award.
In addition, in May 2002, I founded the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) www.dcia.info , a nonprofit organization working toward a viable framework for the Internet peer-to-peer community agreeable to copyright owners, consumers and consumer electronic industries.
I spend my time speaking, consulting and writing. In addition, I lecture to law students at the University of Southern California on the wide diversity of issues surrounding copyright owners and the digital age. I also teach at the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance (LARTA) University and serve as a consultant and on the boards of emerging and fast-growth technology companies. I'm also a contributing editor to LA VOX, Los Angeles’ leading voice in technology.

Why Should You Fear SOPA and PIPA?

Initially, the simple question of the day is: “What’s so bad about trying to protect movies and music from being pirated?” And, the simple answer is: “Nothing at all.”

But upon further examination, the next and ultimately most important question is: “To what lengths will they (studios and the record labels) go to accomplish their goals?” The answer is also simple. They lobby for the passage of bills that would give the government enough power to not only attempt to stop piracy and fail, BUT while failing would also infringe on free speech, cost millions of jobs and hamper innovation all at the same time. The phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees” has never been so perfectly matched with a real life situation. The birth of SOPA and PIPA has been established through the efforts of the lobbying arms of the studios and labels The MPAA and RIAA. SOPA or (Stop Online Piracy Act) is in the Senate and PIPA, or (Protect Intellectual Property Act) is in the House. Both bills are essentially the ‘same wolf in sheep’s clothing’ so there is really no need to try and differentiate.

If passed, SOPA and/or PIPA will give the Justice Department the ability to shut down almost any blog or website at will, PLUS it will also do absolutely nothing to stop those that pirate movies or music.

Today the studios and labels rely on DMCA take down notices to handle piracy on websites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook. The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) allows the website to take down the content within a specific period of time after receiving a DMCA notice without penalty.

In most cases all of the companies mentioned above do a fantastic job, and thus far have not done too much complaining about the costs of implementing technology and resources for a successful DMCA compliance structure. The studios and labels have a much more difficult time with websites such as Piratebay.org or, what the studios would call ‘Rogue’ websites, and it requires a little more knowledge about the details of technology that drives such websites to understand why they are such a complicated issue. Piratebay.org doesn’t actually host any infringing content at all, but has millions of links to content being hosted on peer or nodes. A peer, or node is a personal computer connected to the internet with an open source application based on BitTorrent open source code . BitTorrent allows a person to host a file (movie, music, software etc). Those files are made available for download using a torrent download application which happens to be the same application that hosts the infringing files. When someone downloads a file using a BitTorrent, they are actually receiving that one file from multiple machines that are hosting the same exact file using the same piece of software and then they are many cases, making that file available to be downloaded from their machine and the cycle begins. Those files could be hosted on machines that were located in multiple countries and it is possible that the person hosting the infringing file might not even know they are hosting it. Confusing isn’t it? It is this confusion that it makes things more difficult and more dangerous. Dangerous because, Piratebay.org doesn’t actually host, deliver or infringe on any copyright at all. They only have links to such content, because it shows up in their search engine in the same way search result appear in Googles search engine however, under SOPA and PIPA those sites can not only be prosecuted but shut down entirely for the behavior of others they cannot control. It becomes easier to understand why Google is so interested in SOPA and PIPA. If either act had been passed prior to Googles launch, we would all still be using Yahoo, unless of course the Government hadn’t already shut them down too. The same goes for YouTube and Facebook. What concerns free speech advocates about these laws is even more frightening then losing access to Google.

If the government, and those behind government, didn’t like Huffington Post or Breitbart.com it would now be legally plausible and simple to shut them down. After all, Huffington Post editors at some point in time have posted links to content from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other organizations. These networks could now claim that the Huffington Post was infringing upon their copyrights, and that Huffington editors, under SOPA/PIPA, be charged for each offense and go to jail. Yes jail.

“That would never happen” a friend of mine that works at a major studio told me. My response to him was simple. “I have never known a law that gives the government more power that they have not only used but exceeded the laws intent to gain even more power.”

I agree that piracy is a serious problem and between 2001 and 2004 when I testified before Congress, we discussed many solutions, none of which violate our First Amendment Right to Free Speech. I have also worked as an executive at a major studio so I do understand their issues as well however, passage of SOPA or PIPA will essentially allow the Government to shut down the DNS (Domain Name Server) that directed a URL such as www.google.com or www.piratebay.org to the physical address of the server its IP address such as (254.196.2.x). Domain names are simply a fancy and more informative way for you to find a website since the data for a website resides on a server somewhere and that server has a digital address identified by something called an IP or (internet Protocol) address. The Bills target the DNS servers that direct users from the URL name to the IP address. For most users, shutting down an infringing DNS address would prevent them from reaching the website that contained the infringing content or the link to the infringing content. It would NOT however stop the pirate from typing in IP address of (256.196.2.x) as an example, to reach the same content. In short, it wouldn’t stop the pirates from downloading illegal content any more than background checks stop a gang member from purchasing a hand gun. Gang members don’t buy guns legally and Pirates, hackers and criminals never open the legal route either. It’s simply too messy and too easy to get caught. SOPA and PIPA are dangerous, half-baked solutions that will cost millions of jobs, stifle innovation and ultimately do nothing to stop piracy at all. It could be used as a solution for those in Government that seek to silence their opposition, even if that was never the intention. Hollywood has many large donors that are huge contributors to Obama so, even though Harry Reid postponed a vote on the bill, you can bet that they will try to wait for the frenzy to calm down before voting on a somewhat different version of the bill and most likely have a different name than SOPA or PIPA. After all, those names are as about as unpopular as members of Congress right now.

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And once again we have someone trotting out a failed argument against blocking domain names. You seem as ill-informed on the topic as many others who have raised this point. Here are some facts: the US government effectively employs this technique against child pornographers, drug traffickers, and terrorists; furthermore, many of the servers that would be targeted by these domain name blocks are on shared IP addresses, meaning that even if an informed user tried to reach them by IP address they would only see the first Websites listed in the server tables — and there is no guarantee they would reach the download sites they were looking for.

The fact that these measures are already in play, and have been in play for several years, shows that neither freedom or speech nor the Internet have suffered any harm. People are still quite able to deploy nonsense arguments across a multitude of Websites and no US government entities are trying to block them or stop their free speech.

The ignorance backing the anti-SOPA movement is far more terrifying than anything in the PIPA or SOPA bills because, frankly, this ridiculous protest has demonstrated just how easy it is for a company like Google to deceive several million people and organize them into a political weapon that can shape law according to Google’s whims.

And Google’s whims are such that governments may be toppled by them — as when Google completely circumvented the DNS system last year to help Egyptian protestors overthrow the Mubarak government.

And now we learn that while Google’s supporters were unnecessarily protesting laws that would neither silence freedom of speech nor bring down the Internet, Google was quietly maneuvering an FCC vote the outcome of which some critics say really does threaten your freedom of speech — all the while supporting Google’s prerogatives.

I respectfully will call out your comment as a bunch of words mixed together to attempt to form an argument based on technology, and it’s clear that you are missing many of the key components needed to formulate your argument. You are correct about server IP tables, but only in the case that people that pirate already haven’t built massive tables of servers containing infringing content…They have. Additionally, you neglect to mention or understand that decentralized apps do not utilize listed server tables to exchange content. You also seem to think that it is perfectly acceptable for the Government to be able to manipulate results for users by blocking or redirecting results, and that google is somehow a bigger threat than the Government because they have that ability with their OWN servers. I’m sure Ron Paul needs some help on his campaign. You should call him. Finally, blocking domain names to a true black hat, grey hat or even white hat hacker is a trivial pylon to maneuver and since it only take one skilled hacker to figure out a new pathway to the content, it seems that opening the door for the Government to silence Blog sites for a single piece of content is dangerous considering it is so easy to defeat. If you don’t see the danger in that, you either do not understand how easy it is to defeat these feeble attempts technologically or, you just don’t have a problem with Stalin like laws. I do not put that much trust in Government no matter what party is running the show. If you want to compare kiddy porn to sharing music as (worthy of Government overreach and intervention)…well, I can only say that Hugo Chavez would most likely agree with you, but not this American.

I think we also need to ask ourselves if we want to give the government even more power to take down sites after what just happened with Megaupload.

It seems to make the point that the government can already seize foreign “Rogue” sites with SOPA/PIPA. So why do they feel they need even more power? And then to read through the indictment in which they decide to refer to the collective group of defendants as “Mega Conspiracy” a global criminal organization, well it just makes the whole DoJ sound crazy and exactly like the type of people that would start abusing new powers as soon as they got them.

As far as the technical aspects of pirates getting to download sites/blocked content, I think this article does make some good points. But you’re focusing too much on how the internet is now. I think that if the government starts blocking websites that people want to get to we’re going to see a big rise in VPN and encrypted traffic. The Pirate Bay already has IPREDATOR, a fairly cheap VPN that gives you an anonymous IP and encrypts your traffic. SOPA/PIPA will just increase this behavior among internet users, and may end up making it harder for the government to go after the real bad guys.

You probably did not intend this but your article strengthens the case for revised SOPA/PIPA bills.

Google and Piratebay.org essentially provide treasure maps. But the latter’s treasure is mostly ill-gotten and is dispersed everywhere to evade human detection – thru BitTorrent. (Not to mention the name “Pirate…” also pretentiously posts a sign for would-be-thieves.) A revised and narrower bill could let the government to find sites that fit this criteria.

The real problem is that such a bill would kill technologies like BitTorrent that can (and do) have legitamate purposes like file distribution to reduce load on a particular network or site.

We all know there will be a revision. But it must NOT block access methods or technologies with nascent, unrealized value to society…or we may not see the next Google. It must focus on real evidence of piracy, not a theoretical intent to commit it.

The rapid expansion of the IT industry worldwide can be attributed to the desire of people for more freedom of expression and the rights to information. It is a natural desire by all freedom loving individual and its suppression in whatsoever form would be tantamount to violating the spirit of the US Constitution and freedom.

First Summary Judgment…Now SOPA AND PIPA! One article cited “supporters include the film and music industry which often see its products sold illegally.“ Another article cited stopping piracy ” as a “ reasonable goal.” That goal must not be reserved for the 1% (The corporations, networks and studios) who have used their influence and lobbyists to get these acts sponsored; the end of Piracy, either via the Internet or otherwise, must be reserved FOR THE AVERAGE AMERICAN CITIZEN. Ironically, these same corporations lobbying for IP Protection have been shielded, by the government (Summary Judgment) from facing unbiased juries when charged with similar allegations of IP theft. Should Hollywood continue being protected from adhering to the same anti-piracy rules they now have influenced Congress to, once again, enact into law? Let’s see WHO will take the same stand for THEIR constituents that you have taken for Hollywood.! View our PREVIEW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iogIhzTtKEk&feature=youtu.be

Great article for those wishing to learn more about the SOPA and PIPA bills. Passing this bill would mean that all the hard work that technology companies have invested would go to waste. Google algorithms would break down in shambles, small and medium businesses would be affected, and the U.S. will have to relearn how to make the economy work (something no one wants to ever go through).

Do we want to be a country that attempts to fix all consequences of innovation or rather a country that can adapt to the changes around it?

I hope the Government reevaluates the repercussions of what passing SOPA and PIPA can do. Something tells me that technology stands between the generational gap. Thanks for the read